Read Online Cookies and Scream (A Cookie Cutter Shop Mystery) by Virginia Lowell - Free Book Online Page A

her apron.
    “Did everyone know about Greta’s arrival except me?” Olivia was beginning to feel left out.
    “Now, Livie, I’m sure your mother intended to call you as soon as she heard about it, but everything happened so quickly. Ellie was most concerned about finding out all she could about Greta, especially after Sadie Briggs called her. That’s really why Ellie called me: because I’m old enough to remember Greta. I didn’t know her well, of course, but I’d certainly heard about her, mostly from dear Clarisse. They were friends off and on, you know.”
    “Off and on?” Olivia asked. “Did something happen to make Greta and Clarisse stop being friends?”
    Bertha’s forehead puckered as she opened a bag of sugar and set it on the worktable for Maddie, who was impatient to begin measuring cookie dough ingredients. Bertha lined up the remaining sugar bags on a low shelf, and said, “I do hate to spread old gossip, because you never know . . . I suppose it’s possible that Greta has come back to make amends. Maybe that explains why Sadie thought she seemed genuinely sorry to hear that Clarisse had passed away.”
    Make amends?
Olivia tried to avoid gossip, but Greta was about to become her client. She wanted to know what she might be facing. Olivia heard the whir of the stand mixer. Maddie’s attention seemed focused on the flat beater as it moved around the bowl, blending flour, sugar, and butter into cookie dough. “Bertha,” Olivia asked quietly, “did Greta hurt Clarisse in some way? Why would she need to make amends, all these years later?
    Bertha’s thin white eyebrows shot up as if the question startled her. “My goodness, Livie, for the usual thing, of course. She had an affair with Martin.”
    Olivia gasped at the same moment the mixer stopped. “Are you sure? Because—”
    “Are you kidding?” Maddie abandoned her half-mixed dough. “Clarisse’s husband?
That
Martin? Why haven’t I heard about this? I don’t believe it, not for a moment. Clarisse and Martin were totally, absolutely devoted to one another.”
    “Now, now, Maddie,” Bertha said in her firm, yet motherly tone. “I know you’re only just married and all, and Lucas is a fine young man, no doubt about that. I’m sure he’ll be loyal as the day is long. But anyone can stray. If that happens, it doesn’t mean the marriage wasn’t good to begin with, and . . . well, sometimes a couple can weather the storm and feel even closer.”
    “Bertha, I’m confused,” Olivia said. “Clarisse was several years younger than Greta. I heard that Greta left the country at eighteen, so Clarisse would have been about fifteen. She hadn’t even met Martin. If she and Greta corresponded from separate continents, how could Martin have. . . .” Olivia remembered a long-ago talk she’d had with Clarisse about raising children. Although Clarisse and Martin had built several lucrative businesses together, the burden of child rearing had fallen upon Clarisse. She’d hired Bertha to help, but she hadn’t wanted to abandon her boys to a full-time nanny. Clarisse had genuinely wanted to be a mother. So she’d stayed home when the family businesses required travel. “Martin sometimes flew to Europe, didn’t he?” Olivia asked. “Clarisse mentioned that to me maybe a year before she was . . .” The memory of Clarisse’s murder invaded Olivia’s thoughts less frequently now, but it still hurt. “I remember Clarisse seemed to regret never having traveled to Europe.”
    Bertha snorted. “Her regret went a lot deeper than that. There she was, staying home with her little boys because they both had chicken pox, and Martin goes traipsing off to Europe by himself. He didn’t have to go, mind you. The trip was supposed to be part business and part vacation for him and Clarisse. I was planning to stay with the boys. Then they got sick, and what with Clarisse being trained as a nurse, she decided she should watch over them. I